Mundesley School in the village of Mundesley on the Norfolk coast, a little south-east of Cromer, is part of the Coastal Federation group of schools. The three schools in the group all share an ethos and values that we love.
Their aim is "To ensure our children are effective communicators, confident individuals, successful learners and responsible citizens. We want them to be healthy and active. As well as feeling safe and nurtured. We promote the ethos that every child should be included and respected so that they can reach their full potential."
In addition, they they are aiming to shape children to be resourceful, collaborative, curious, reflective, creative and resilient. All of these values overlay perfectly with adventure play and enabling children to understand and manage risk.
There are two adjacent schools on the same large site that house around 97 infants and 108 juniors. in this diagram, you can see the location of the two school buildings.
Our brief from the outset was to create two distinct areas for infants and juniors. With the infants, we used a mound to create a focus for the build, along with a stage to allow performances and blackboards for outdoor teaching and impromptu illustrations.
For the juniors we designed it to nestle within a copse and create a view across the school and playgrounds from a lookout tower. There's an escape slide to add some additional fun and just enough inherent risk designed in to make it a challenge for children to grow into as they learn and extend their own limits.
The project was funded by a grant made available to schools to support their teaching, sports and personal development goals.
We're delighted with the results and when you see the following images, it's pretty clear that the young people of Mundesley school are too.